The Perfect Child(8)

“Promise?”

“I’m going to make sure of it. We’re going to get you magic medicine, and it’ll help your pain feel so much better. Do you know what color the magic medicine is?” She looked at me, wide eyed and curious, waiting. “It’s going to be red. Do you like the color red?”

She shook her head.

I faked surprise. “You don’t? How can you not like red?”

“I like purple,” she said.

“Hmmm . . .” I scratched my chin, pretending to think. “I can’t do anything about the magic medicine. It has to stay red, but I’ll tell you what—why don’t we make your cast purple? Would you like that?”

“Purple?” she asked again, like it was too good to be true.

“Yep. And I will come check on you every day after your surgery to make sure you’re getting better.”

She squealed, beaming. She crawled toward me, and I opened my arms so she could crawl onto my lap. She cuddled up against me. I wrapped my arms around her tiny frame. I’d never felt so large. I didn’t want to move too much because I was afraid of accidentally hurting her. She was as delicate as any newborn I’d ever held.



I was just as nervous to perform her surgery as I had been for my first solo surgery during residency. I wanted it to go perfectly. Feeding experts flew in from around the world to consult on her case. They assured me she was stable enough to go under, but it did nothing to ease my worry. I didn’t want her to go through any more than she’d already gone through. I burned with anger every time I thought about the person who’d hurt her. The police weren’t any closer to finding out who’d done it than they’d been a week ago, but I refused to entertain the possibility that they wouldn’t find the person who’d hurt her. Someone had to be punished.

Janie was clutching her favorite dinosaur to her chest when I came into the preoperating room. She gave me a big smile when I walked in, recognizing me even in all of my surgical gear. She had a gap-toothed smile now. They had removed her rotten tooth in front a few days ago. “Dr. Chris!” Her face lit up.

“Hey, sweetie. I see you brought Fred.” I leaned over and planted a kiss on her forehead. Normally, I wouldn’t think about kissing a patient on the forehead, but none of the regular rules applied to Janie.

“I wanna keep Fred.” She hugged him close to her chest.

“Of course Fred can come.” I jiggled one of his arms dramatically. “I think he has a broken arm too. We have to do something about this.”

She giggled. It was the first time I’d made her giggle, and my heart melted.

“Do you have any more questions for me?” I asked, even though it’d been less than twelve hours since we’d been through it.

She shook her head, holding Fred just as tightly. I planted another kiss on the top of her head. “You’re going to do great. I’ll see you in a little bit.”

I’d never performed surgery with an audience, but the adjacent room was filled with residents and interns. It went better than I had expected. She tolerated the anesthesia, and the break to her elbow was clean, without any of the splintering I’d been nervous about. I reset it the way it should’ve been done the first time. I fused and grafted the four places where her muscles and tendons had calcified together. It was over before I knew it, and they were wheeling her into the recovery room. I wrapped Fred’s arm in a matching purple cast and brought him with me into recovery.

I leaned over her bed and placed my hand on her forehead. Her eyelids fluttered as she struggled to wake up. “Look who I brought.” I held him up so she could see him better. She was still disoriented from the anesthesia. A smile slowly spread across her face. She grabbed him and brought him to her face. “See, he had surgery just like you. I made his cast just like yours so you guys match.”

Another hazy smile. Her eyes looked funny. Her body heaved, and yellow liquid spurted from her mouth. I grabbed the green basin and quickly sat her up. I held her while she dry heaved into it. There was nothing in her stomach, since she hadn’t been able to eat anything the night before surgery. “It’s okay, sweetie. It’s just the medicine making you sick.”

I took off her soiled gown and covered her up with a fresh new blanket. I rubbed her arm softly. “You’re doing great, sweetheart. Just great.”

She closed her eyes and drifted back to sleep. She opened her eyes every so often to make sure I was still there. Normally, the nurses sat with kids in the recovery room, but I wanted her to have a familiar face looking back at her when she woke.

I pulled a chair next to her and propped my legs up on the end of her bed. She looked so peaceful, lost in her world of dreams. Stillness enveloped her, and Janie was never still. She moved constantly, always fidgeting. It was so nice to see her at rest, even if it was from the drugs coursing through her system. I couldn’t pull myself away from her. I closed my eyes, and it wasn’t long before I fell asleep beside her.





FIVE

HANNAH BAUER

Where was Christopher, and what was taking him so long? He was the one who’d booked the dinner reservation and sent it to all our calendars, so there was no way he’d forgotten about it. I glanced at my watch for the third time in ten minutes. It was so unlike him to be late and not let me know something had come up. I’d already pictured him in a car accident on Highway 12 more than once.